As hospitality enters the metaverse era, artificial empathy becomes essential for developing of artificial intelligence (AI) agents. Using the empathy cycle model, computational empathy frameworks and interdisciplinary research, this conceptual paper proposes a model explaining how artificial empathy will evolve in the hospitality metaverse era. The paper also addresses customer empathy and responses towards AI agents and other human actors with in the hospitality context. It explores how metaverse characteristics such as immersiveness, sociability, experiential nature, interoperability, blended virtual and physical environments as well as environmental fidelity will shape computational models and evolution of artificial empathy. Findings suggests that metaverse enables AI agents to form a seamless cycle of detection, resonation, and response to consumers’ affective states, facilitating the evolution of artificial empathy. Additionally, the paper outlines conditions under which the artificial empathy cycle may be disrupted and proposes future research questions that can advance our understanding of artificial empathy.

中文翻译：

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酒店元宇宙时代人工同理心的演变


随着酒店业进入元宇宙时代，人工同理心对于人工智能 （AI） 代理的开发变得至关重要。使用同理心循环模型、计算同理心框架和跨学科研究，这篇概念性论文提出了一个模型，解释了人工同理心在酒店元宇宙时代将如何发展。该白皮书还讨论了客户对 AI 代理和其他人类行为者在酒店环境中的同理心和反应。它探讨了沉浸式、社交性、体验性、互操作性、虚拟和物理混合环境以及环境保真度等元宇宙特征将如何塑造计算模型和人工同理心的演变。研究结果表明，元宇宙使 AI 代理能够形成检测、共振和响应消费者情感状态的无缝循环，从而促进人工同理心的进化。此外，本文概述了人工同理心周期可能被破坏的条件，并提出了可以促进我们对人工同理心的理解的未来研究问题。